The Free Press | Page 6

breed. The fellow that got rich quick in a newspaper
speculation--or ended in jail over it--was exactly the same kind of man
as he who bought a peerage out of a "combine" in music halls or cut his
throat when his bluff in Indian silver was called. The type is the
common modern type. Parliament is full of it, and it runs newspapers
only as one of its activities--all of which need the suggestion of
advertisement.
The newspaper owner and the advertiser, then, were intermixed. But on
the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the stronger,
and what you got was a sort of imposition, often quite conscious and
direct, of advertising power over the Press; and this was, as I have said,
not only negative (that was long obvious) but, at last, positive.
Sometimes there is an open battle between the advertiser and the
proprietor, especially when, as is the case with framers of artificial
monopolies, both combatants are of a low, cunning, and unintelligent
type. Minor friction due to the same cause is constantly taking place.

Sometimes the victory falls to the newspaper proprietor, more often to
the advertiser--never to the public.
So far, we see the growth of the Press marked by these characteristics.
(1) It falls into the hands of a very few rich men, and nearly always of
men of base origin and capacities. (2) It is, in their hands, a mere
commercial enterprise. (3) It is economically supported by advertisers
who can in part control it, but these are of the same Capitalist kind, in
motive and manner, with the owners of the papers. Their power does
not, therefore, clash in the main with that of the owners, but the fact
that advertisement makes a paper, has created a standard of printing
and paper such that no one--save at a disastrous loss--can issue
regularly to large numbers news and opinion which the large Capitalist
advertisers disapprove.
There would seem to be for any independent Press no possible
economic basis, because the public has been taught to expect for 1d.
what it costs 3d. to make--the difference being paid by the
advertisement subsidy.
But there is now a graver corruption at work even than this always
negative and sometimes positive power of the advertiser.
It is the advent of the great newspaper owner as the true governing
power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the officials in
the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them, imposing policies,
and, in general, usurping sovereignty--all this secretly and without
responsibility.
It is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark of this
country to-day. Its full development has come on us suddenly and taken
us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war. It was undreamt of but a
few years ago. It is already to-day the capital fact of our whole political
system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by the owner of a group
of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any other form of open
authority.
No policy is attempted until it is ascertained that the newspaper owner

is in favour of it. Few are proffered without first consulting his wishes.
Many are directly ordered by him. We are, if we talk in terms of real
things (as men do in their private councils at Westminster) mainly
governed to-day, not even by the professional politicians, nor even by
those who pay them money, but by whatever owner of a newspaper
trust is, for the moment, the most unscrupulous and the most ambitious.
How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible
remedy.

VI
During all this development of the Press there has been present, first, as
a doctrine plausible and arguable; next, as a tradition no longer in touch
with reality; lastly, as an hypocrisy still pleading truth, a certain
definition of the functions of the Press; a doctrine which we must
thoroughly grasp before proceeding to the nature of the Press in these
our present times.
This doctrine was that the Press was an organ of opinion--that is, an
expression of the public thought and will.
Why was this doctrine originally what I have called it, "plausible and
arguable"? At first sight it would seem to be neither the one nor the
other.
A man controlling a newspaper can print any folly or falsehood he likes.
He is the dictator: not his public. They only receive.
Yes: but he is limited by his public.
If I am rich enough to set up a big rotary printing press and print in a
million copies of a daily paper the news that the Pope has become a
Methodist, or the opinion